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In his wonderful book The Wrongful Conviction of Oscar Pistorius, which extends far beyond the subject of its famous eponymous figure, Dr. Brent Willock integrates foundational psychoanalytic principles with both brain function and the new and emerging science of sleep disorders. Without the psychoanalytic perspective that he provides, critical facets of the nascent science of sleep disorder would remain largely inaccessible and inexplicable; with it, he is able to help us make sense of complex, seemingly incompatible states of alternating consciousness and arousal that attend various forms of sleep disorder (parasomnias). His work confirms that the patient, painstaking observational work and conceptualization/reconceptualization that has attended the analytic effort is utterly invaluable to us as we attempt to interpret the implications of our rapidly increasing knowledge of the human brain. Dr. Willock demonstrates that psychoanalytic appreciation of unconscious motivation and primary process thinking as they entwine themselves with conscious intentionalities and secondary process capacity permits us to open doors into the seemingly bewildering world of parasomnia experience. What would have been impossible to decipher without an analytic perspective begins to emerge as a series of plausibilities and insights that serve to clarify some of the darkest potentialities we all carry within us.
We are reminded that sleep is a borderland where instinctual drives have the opportunity to express themselves with far greater freedom then they can in waking life without being subjected to the opprobrium and
cultural sanctions that inhibit most of us when we act outside the dream-world. Most of the time, Dr. Willock notes, a biological night watchman, much like Freud's (1901, p. 680) analogous metaphorical night watchman, who “suppress[es] disturbances so that the townsman may not be woken up,” ensures that we are motorically inhibited when we are dreaming so that we can't a